<p>I'm a junior in high school this year and I recently brought up the subject of college visits with my parents. Both of them essentially said that they don't see the value in these trips and that I probably won't get to visit any of the colleges I apply to. Being from Alaska, college visits certainly present a significant financial burden, but I still feel they are important.</p>
<p>Based on the experiences you all have had, how beneficial are college visits? Have you found them to be an important factor in deciding where to attend? Is it possible to gain an advantage in admissions by visiting a school?</p>
<p>They were extremely important to me. After visiting my New England choices (Colby, Bates, Bowdoin, Hampshire, Amherst), I was able to cross the first three off the list. Your choice should be somewhere you can see yourself being at for four years (as obvious as that sounds), and the surrounding area could very well play a role in your decision. Each college also has a sort of personality, and you can not gain a true sense of what it is until you visit.</p>
<p>College visits were very important to me. Before visiting Smith, I was fairly neutral on it. Visiting made me fall in love with the campus and the school. It’s my top choice, and it’s very likely that I will now go there in the fall. During the same trip, I crossed Amherst and Northeastern off my list because they just did not fit.</p>
<p>Visiting colleges also gives you a sense of what you like and what you dislike in a school. Even if you can’t fly across the country, I’d try visiting a few that are either nearby or else not too difficult to get to. If nothing else, it gives you a sense of what to look for.</p>
<p>If you and your family can arrange it, definitely visit the schools you want to apply to. You definitely develop a feel for the school and everybody has their own criteria for picking a school. You can only get so much information from others’ visit reports on this site, but its a good place to start. Again, definitely go visit if your family can manage it. :-)</p>
<p>Here is what I recommend (at least for financial feasibility). Apply to many colleges, and visit the ones you are accepted to. It may not be idea, but I think it’s a good happy medium. Some colleges will provide scholarships for their students to attend their accepted student days. </p>
<p>I think colleges will definitely understand the burden being from Alaska presents in terms of visiting. You will also get a nice boost for geographic diversity.</p>
<p>In a one-day visit, it’s unlikely that a visitor would really meet more than a fraction of a percent of the current students, faculty and staff. It’s very easy for a student on a college visit to wind up making a decision on whether to apply to or attend a college based upon a very tiny percentage of a campus population. </p>
<p>I’ve always felt that college visits are of dubious value. Here’s what a student is most likely to pick up from their visit:</p>
<p>I liked / didn’t like the architecture.
I liked / didn’t like the geographic setting.
My student tour guide was / wasn’t hot.
I did / didn’t see many people who looked like me.
I do / don’t like to dress in the most common mode of attire that I saw.
The weather was nice / the weather was nasty.</p>
<p>And that’s pretty much it. Certainly campus visits have their value, but they’re also fraught with shortcomings and pitfalls. Given your location, I’d utilize all the online and video resources + CC, email and the internet versions of the campus newspapers. Then, once I had the process down to my choice, I think I’d make a visit there to confirm my interest.</p>
<p>My counselors argue it does. I don’t think it plays a major role but I do think it demonstrates interest which colleges generally like. Some interesting facts about my visits/admissions (make of them what you will):
Visited Swarthmore 3 times – accepted and was named a finalist for their only merit scholarship. Didn’t end up getting the scholarship though.
Visited Wesleyan 1 time – waitlisted
Visited Georgetown 1 time – waitlisted
Visited Bryn Mawr 2 times – admitted and received their only merit award
Visited Brandeis 0 times – admitted and no merit award
Visited Vermont 0 times – admitted and given highest merit award
Visited Delaware 1 time – admitted to honors program and given a very modest merit award
Visited Goucher 2 times – received the highest merit award
Visited Dickinson 1 time – received the middle merit award</p>
<p>No school will expect you to visit from Alaska. It should not affect your chances. </p>
<p>However, it would be very useful to visit schools that you are accepted to and are seriously considering going if you have a choice to make. I agree that saving your money for these due diligence visits would be a good option. </p>
<p>If you are trying to evaluate a school that you have been accepted to, arrange an overnight in a dorm with a host AT A TIME OTHER THAN ACCEPTED STUDENTS DAY. Those accepted students days are staged and are great for bonding with your future classmates, but not ideal to see the college as it really is. </p>
<p>During the visit, talk to as many students as you can, visit classes, maybe arrange to talk to a professor in an area that you are interested in, and do all of this, politely of course, with the frankness of knowing that the choice is yours. Remember that you really need to have your questions answered so don’t be shy. Try to imagine yourself being part of this community and see how it feels. </p>
<p>My D found these visits instrumental in helping her turn what initially seemed like a difficult choice into an easy one.</p>
<p>Momwonders makes an excellent point about ED.</p>
<p>For my daughter (who’s awaiting her last notifications right now), visiting didn’t seem to make much difference, but we keep throwing time and money at the process. By and large, she was like Browning’s “Last Duchess”: she liked whate’er she looked on, and her look went everywhere.</p>
<p>Except that her look actually didn’t go everywhere. We removed some colleges from the list because we’d researched them heavily. Emory, for example, seemed like a great prospect on paper. As we read about it (including but by no means limited to reading the Emory forum on CC), we came to the conclusion that probably she and Emory weren’t right for each other. So we scrapped plans to travel to Atlanta.</p>
<p>The one place she did visit that she was lukewarm about was out state flagship. It has >25,000 undergraduates, and she wants someplace smaller. She’s visited it more than once now. She sees that it has national-caliber offerings in her areas of interest, and that if she went there instead of the other colleges on her list, she could graduate with a B.A. and a truckload of change. But it still has >25,000 undergraduates, and her feeling about the size of it didn’t change. I’ll eat my hat if she goes. (And I’ll have plenty of money left over to replace it with a better hat, too.)</p>
<p>I suppose this is a long-winded way of saying, you can learn a lot about colleges without visiting them, and you can visit colleges and not learn all that much.</p>
<p>It’s true, as others have said, that some colleges (including some quite selective ones, such as Emory) track and consider demonstrated student interest. But there are ways besides visiting to demonstrate interest. I agree with ClassicRockerDad that it would be appalling if a college in the Lower 48 held it against you that you didn’t spend the money to travel from Alaska to, say, Winston-Salem, NC, for a 90-minute information session and a campus tour.</p>
<p>To know how much a school cares about demonstrated interest, google its Common Data Set and check section C7, Level of applicant’s interest. It will be one of Very Important, Important, Considered, Not Considered.</p>
<p>Visiting is one way of showing interest; having an email conversation with your area rep for a school is good at great distances.</p>
<p>Try to make a good list of schools without visiting, and then after you have potential choices, I’m sure your parents will be more open to visiting the school where their money will be going for the next four years, a plane ticket cost much less than what they’ll be paying.</p>
<p>When my son was a junior we did a number of visits in the pacific northwest during spring break. At the time, he was really interested in Reed and Lewis & Clark. After visiting, he didn’t apply to either one.</p>
<p>While waiting for acceptances before visiting may sound practical, the time frame between RD acceptance and the commitment deadline of May 1st is pretty short.</p>
<p>I would recommend visting earlier if you can do so.</p>
<p>It’s unfortunate but virtually inevitable that the schools you would benefit the most from visiting are those farthest away. If you lived in New England, you would probably not gain that much knowledge about any particular New England school from a visit, particularly if you had done your research. But living in Alaska, you probably really need to see a New England, Midwestern, Southern, or even West Coast school in person to get a good idea of the campus environment. The more distant, the more foreign (not always, but generally), and the more foreign, the more questions that need to be answered, making it more important to see the school up close.</p>
<p>As others have suggested, if visiting a large number of possible choices to determine where to apply is not feasible, it may be best to apply to a great many and then visit those few that accept you that you are most interested in.</p>
<p>I think you can pick the likelies from the web sites and visit the finalists next spring. You’ll be able to see majors, student counts, dorm rooms (maybe), on the web site. College Board will tell you the average SAT scores and GPAs. This site and college pro wler and books will tell you if students are happy.</p>
<p>Even colleges that care about interest won’t pout that you didn’t visit from Alaska; just show that you understand their culture and how you would fit in. Visiting during Admitted Student Weekend is a waste as far as figuring out the culture of the school.</p>
<p>Are there ANY schools close to you so that you could at least visit them and see if you like large vs small? You could also visit and get an idea of what colleges are like so you could target your research.</p>
<p>^^ and ^: Every school is showing off its best features at these gatherings, so it can be valuable to know if you like what the school and its students are promoting. You can also see things you might not like, ask critical questions, and see if you like the answers. But do remember that you’re seeing the best the schools have to offer.</p>
<p>If you can read the college guides that are more opinionated–Insiders Guide, Fiske Guide, College P R O W L E R Guide, and Choosing the Right College you will get a pretty complete picture of each school they list. The online tours are also pretty good.</p>
;)</p>